Ben Esra telefonda seni boşaltmamı ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32

Chapter 13: Utah – “Love me For Better”

“Hello” came the sleepy voice at the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s late but I just listened to a message from a Tyler McGee. He called using your phone.”

The man at the other end replied after clearing his voice. “Yep, I think that’s the name of the young man in my barn. Didn’t catch the last name but he called himself Tyler.”

“Can I speak to him?”

It’s late, Missy. I’m not getting him now. The boy is probably fast asleep.”

“I’m sorry,” she said for a second time. “Would it be too much for you to call me back in the morning?”

“I can do that. What did you say your name was?”

“Destiny. Destiny Williams.”

“It’ll be early. Probably about 5 AM.”

“That will be perfect.” She paused thinking. “Can you tell me anything about Tyler? Did he just show up at your door?”

“Nope, we saw him getting pulled out of a car. A lady left him. She just pulled him out of her trunk and left him by the side of the road. Then she drove off.”

“You didn’t happen to get a plate did you?”

“Nope. The car was too far away. Sorry, lady but I need to sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Thank you. Thanks so much for taking my call.”

…………………………………..

“She did what?” Maria exclaimed.

“Yanked him out of the car. That’s what he said. What do you make of it?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what to tell you. I think you should call your detective friend.”

“I was wondering if I should. I am wondering if I should fly out there so I can talk to that farmer alone?”

“I think you should call the detective. Don’t go doing something stupid.”

“But what if he ran off with Nya!?” She yelled. “What if he did the same thing he did with Rachel?”

Maria answered in as calm a voice as she could summon. She could tell her friend was getting worked up over things that might be true. “Call the detective, Destiny.”

Sounding as dejected as ever she answered. “OK, I will. I’ll call him now.”

“That would be best, Destiny. This is what these people do every day. You need to trust this man. He’ll let you know if it’s wise to fly or better to wait until the authorities apprehend Tyler.”

……………………..

After a brief conversation with Detective Wilson, they drew several conclusions. First, Tyler indeed was missing. Two, there was confirming evidence that Nya Stallworth was somehow involved and remained a person of interest. Three, as far as video evidence demonstrated, there was no indication of a forced abduction. Therefore, no crime had been committed. It was because of this last reason, Detective Wilson consented to allow Destiny to fly to Utah without police involvement. She had expressed a desire to speak with the farmer alone. Afterward, she intended to talk with Tyler alone.

“Just make sure you bring him here when you return.”

……………………..

The farmer called that morning. Their conversation remained brief. Destiny boarded a 6:20 AM flight to Salt Lake. Even with the early departure, it would take until early afternoon before she would reach Eskdale.

“If you could just keep our conversation private, I would appreciate this. I would like to talk to you again before I talk to him.”

Destiny thought he heard the man chuckle. “Sure thing, Missy.”

………………………….

Mr. Thomas was a white-haired and bearded man in his 70s. He reminded Destiny of what Moses may have looked like while leading the Israelites in the desert. His beard was thick and at least six inches in length. It was so white it appeared to glow.

Mr. Thomas was polite yet direct. Destiny appreciated the way he answered her questions. She could see he was telling the truth. He had nothing to hide.

“As I told you on the phone, this black car came by around noon. We don’t get much traffic around here, so the sound of an engine idling got our attention. My wife and I saw it from the front window. A dark-skinned lady, about your color, got out and pulled your friend out of the trunk. She rolled him off to the side of the road and then drove off that way.” He pointed to his left.

From the front porch, Destiny understood why he couldn’t see the plate number. The dirt drive from the road to his home was at least 100 yards.

“That fellow was sound asleep when we got to him. I rolled him onto a blanket and then slid him up into one of my wagons. He’s a heavy one. My wife and I, couldn’t get him to wake but we could see he was breathing just fine. There are no doctors out here so, we kept him in the shade of the tree over there. We just sat and waited. He woke a couple of hours later. Your friend seems like a nice young man.”

“And he didn’t tell you anything about who that lady was or why he ended up here?”

“No, he seemed pretty disoriented. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. I don’t blame him for not telling us anything. He pretty much kept to himself. We gave him some food and Escort Bayan told him if he wanted to stay the night, he had to stay in the barn. The only thing he wanted was to use my phone to call you.” He held up a flip-phone that looked as if it had been around since the 1990s.

“And you say he’s around here?”

“He took a walk down that path about an hour ago. There’s a nice view from up top that little rise. If he’s not up there, he’s probably on his way back.”

Destiny looked at the small hill no more than half a mile away. “Thanks, Mr. Thomas. Thanks so much.”

She smiled when his eyes dropped toward her chest and then shot back up.

Mr. Thomas grinned. “You’re welcome to stay for dinner. We live simply out here but we will feed you if you want to stay that long. Dinner is at six.”

……………………………

She found Tyler seated on a small boulder facing in the opposite direction. He jumped to his feet when seeing her crest the rise.

“Destiny!” He exclaimed and ran to embrace her.

Holding up a hand, she halted his forward progress. Speaking in an unemotional tone she said, “It’s good to see your alive, Tyler, but I don’t need a hug. Thanks anyway.”

It was a cold and distant voice that sent a chill up his spine. She had used that same tone during the days after the Rachel incident. “Destiny, I didn’t run away with anyone. I can tell you’re thinking I did, but you’re wrong. I didn’t. She took me. I’ve been her prisoner for more than a week.”

“Who took you. Who are you talking about?” She asked guardedly.

“Nya. Nya, the girl from high school. One of Bree’s girls.”

Destiny couldn’t suppress her anger. “So it was her! It was that bitch! And how in the hell did she know where we lived!?”

Tyler bowed his head and then looked back up. “I told her.” He watched Destiny’s nostrils flare in anger. “That day you went back to the high school and left me in the car …. she spotted me. We talked while you were inside.”

“You bastard! And you didn’t have the dignity to tell me!?”

“I was afraid. I knew you would be furious.”

“You’re damn right! You piece of shit! I can’t believe you did this!” Her voice suddenly changed to that of a sarcastic little girl. She became very expressive in a demeaning/cutesy sort of way. “And you thought it would be best to let her know exactly where you lived. How convenient! And I can see you set up a nice little time for your rendezvous when little Destiny was out and about and wouldn’t be around to catch you.” She turned away after glaring at him menacingly.

“Wait, Destiny! Please don’t leave. It’s not what you think. That’s not what happened. None of that is true!”

She paused but stood with her back to him and waited.

“I told her where I lived. She tricked me. At first, I told her we lived in Lincoln Knolls. She acted shocked and said she lived nearby, like within a few miles. I believed her. When she asked what street, I told her. As soon as I did, I knew I had said too much. I made a mistake. And yes, I should have told you. But I was afraid. I was afraid you’d kill me. I knew you would punish me. That’s why I kept our conversation to myself. But I didn’t tell her because I wanted her to come over. I made an innocent mistake. It was Nya who lied. She lied about where she lived and I fell for it.”

Destiny listened and slowly turned around. “I’m listening.”

“She came to the door wearing one of those stupid Mr. potato noses. I knew who she was right away. She made me laugh. As soon as I let her in, she went straight to the kitchen and got a glass of wine. She slipped a drug in my glass. We talked and then she asked if I would go outside and listen to her car because something wasn’t sounding right. I wasn’t feeling so good by then – I felt so sleepy. The last thing I remember was sitting in the passenger seat listening to her trying to start the car.”

“That’s all I remember. Next thing I knew I was at her house, naked and tied to the floor. She kept me handcuffed with my hands behind my back. She put a big chain around my neck and kept me padlocked to the bed. Whenever I got to use the bathroom or go anywhere, she chained me to something. She had these anchors everywhere.”

“She kept me hard too. Even though my mouth was taped, she shoved little blue pills in through a tiny hole in the tape. I couldn’t do anything to stop her. I tried pushing my tongue against the pill to keep it out of my mouth, it would eventually dissolve and do its thing.”

Destiny asked in a subdued, but still guarded voice. “So you two had sex?”

Tyler nodded. “But it was one-way, Destiny. I didn’t want it. She did. She had me strapped down. She kept me hard and I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t do anything. I kept thinking about other things while she was doing it. He couldn’t bring himself to use the f-word, “She’d do it with my mouth taped because if it wasn’t, I told her this should be with you and not her. Anytime I said anything like that, she’d get pissed and Bayan Escort retape my mouth before going back to what she was doing. Sometimes she even gave me more of the Viagra just to prove a point.”

Tyler openly cried. Destiny saw the hurt in his face while confessing.

Dez asked. “Are you telling me the truth? Is this what really happened?”

“Yes!” He exclaimed. “Yes, it is” He answered with the most pleading of voices. “She told me her plan – the drug, the glasses, the wiping of her fingerprints from the kitchen, her taking the wine and glasses with her, the fake license plate, the direction she drove to throw off where she lived, the borrowed car. She told me everything. After learning about all she did, I didn’t believe I was going to be found. Her plan sounded well-thought-out.”

“But why? Why did she do this?”

“She still had a crush on me. I had become her obsession. I was her, ‘once in a lifetime’ lover, I guess. That’s what she told me.”

Destiny was about to say something but Tyler cut her short.

“Let me finish. I need to get this out. You need to know I’m not hiding things from you. I’ve messed up enough already.”

“Go on.”

“We pretty much had one-way sex for a week. You need to know I did everything I could to let her know I wanted to be with you. I kept bringing your name up. She didn’t want to hear about you. She kept taping my mouth whenever I mentioned your name or reminded her how wrong this all was. I kept telling her that despite what she was doing, she could never change my heart.”

“She saw I wasn’t going to play her game. I made it as clear as day I wasn’t into the sex. I think the sex felt pretty empty for her. Eventually, she started to listen. She started listening to what I kept telling her. She realized I wasn’t going to change. After about a week she told me why she wanted me. Destiny, she’s messed up in the head. She’s had too many broken relationships. Too many people have told her they loved her when all they wanted was her body. I was the one guy who never did. I didn’t tell her I loved her but I never hurt her. I’m the one who made her feel loved. She knew I wouldn’t take advantage of her. And, I was her first. That probably had a lot to do her feelings for me too. That’s why she took me.”

“Destiny, I don’t want to hurt you but I know you want the truth.”

“That’s what I want.”

“Ok then. Here comes the hard part.” Tyler swallowed hard. “She only agreed to let me go after I agreed to have consensual sex with her. I agreed to be that guy. We made love for a long time. I did everything I could to make her feel loved. But I don’t love her. I have never loved her. I only did what she wanted because it was my ticket home.”

“I kept telling myself I could do this because it was my way out of there. I kept telling myself it was ok to do it since it was a means to an end.”

“Goddess, I held out for 10 days before agreeing. I thought police would find me, but no one came. I had no other choice. It was either that or stay with her.”

Tyler sunk to his knees. He now cried openly. “I am so sorry for everything. This could have all been avoided if I had only kept my mouth shut about where we lived.” He held up his hands begging for mercy. “I know what you’re thinking. I know you think I ran off with her. I know you think this is Rachel all over again, but it’s not. It’s not that way at all. Please believe me. Please believe me, Destiny. I’m begging you. I’m begging you.”

Destiny looked down at him. He had become as much of an emotional mess as she. “I want to believe you.”

Taking a seat, she rested her back against a boulder. “For the past week, I’ve been telling myself you and Nya left as part of a plan.”

Tyler adamantly shook his head.

“Ever since you left, I have hated you because of that. I’m not even sure why I made the trip out here. Mostly it was so I could talk to Mr. Thomas and get his take on what he knew.”

It was all Tyler could do to not talk. He watched her make doodle marks in the sand. Eventually, she looked at him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more pain than while going through this experience.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I couldn’t believe you would do such a thing to me. It tore my heart thinking you had.”

She stopped talking. Her sobs made talking almost impossible.

“It was the video, Tyler. It looked like you two were having fun, that you left on your own accord. I didn’t see any reservation in you doing anything with her. God, that hurt to see.”

“But you do see, don’t you?”

It was then when Destiny opened her arms and nodded in affirmation. Tyler came to her. Together they cried tears of relief.

“I love you, My Tyler. I love you so much!”

“And I love you, Goddess.”

Together they hugged and cried and kissed and forgave.

With Tyler still in her arms, Destiny looked around. “It’s beautiful here. I climbed this stupid hill to find you and haven’t even noticed how pretty the dessert is.”

Tyler Escort laughed awkwardly. “It is. I love you,” he stated and kissed her neck. “Will you take me as your slave again?”

Destiny smiled a million-dollar smile. Even though she looked terrible, she looked so immensely beautiful. “I will. But don’t you ever do doing something on your own without letting me know.”

Tyler nodded. “Ok. I won’t. Promise. Never again.”

“I can’t believe you had to go through all of that with her.”

“I’ve forgiven her. I know what she did was wrong but I’ve forgiven her. She was looking for love. That’s all.”

“I don’t know that I can forgive her. She needs to pay for what she did.”

“You’d have to find her first. I have no idea where she lives.”

“Utah would be the place I’d start looking first,” Destiny said.

“Utah is a big place. She put me in the back of her car and told me to drink. Next thing I remember is seeing ole Moses staring at me.”

Destiny giggled. “He DOES look like Moses. I thought the same thing!”

They both laughed.

“Moses invited us to dinner.”

“Did you take him up on it?”

“Not yet. I’m thinking we should stay and be hospitable.”

“He’s got a nice place to bunk down if you want to enjoy his overnight accommodations,” Tyler added.

“Really?”

“We can do it in the hay. What do you think?”

“We’re just doing dinner. We need to get back to civilization, and we need to keep talking.”

“That sounds like a good plan.” Tyler stood and held out his hand to help her stand. “Have I ever told you, you are the prettiest girl in the whole wide world?”

Destiny smiled. “I don’t think you have.”

“Well, you are. You are that and more. You’re as beautiful as the gods.”

“That sounds nice. How about I be your god. You can call me Goddess.”

They both chuckled.

“C’mon, let’s head back. Time is getting on.”

………………………….

By the time they arrived at the airport hotel both she and Tyler were physically and emotionally exhausted. Not only had Destiny been up since the crack of dawn but their day had been filled with the stressors surrounding his absence and their mutual desire to reconcile.

Indeed, it had been a hard day but it had also been a good one. It had been a day of talking. It had been a day to put aside assumptions and beliefs and accept the truth as it was.

But most important of all, this had been a day to forgive and be forgiven. It had been a day for Tyler to ask forgiveness from the woman he loved more than anyone. It was also time for Destiny to forgive Tyler for thinking the worst and not giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Late that night, and after showering, they slipped between the plush cotton sheets.

“Just hold me, my slave.”

Hearing her command coming so naturally from her lips lifted Tyler’s spirit. He needed to hear her speak to him in this way. It felt good knowing she thought of him as her slave. It felt even better to be accepted. He had no greater fear than the fear of Destiny not trusting him. Having her call him her slave was verification she had opened her heart once again.

“I was hoping you would want me to hold you.”

Tyler slipped an arm under her neck and brought the other over and around to her chest. That hand gripped hold of the most luscious of breasts.

Destiny sighed a sigh of contentment. She felt loved. She felt secure. She felt completed having her man back where he belonged. Although still healing from the events of the past 10 days, she hadn’t lost complete trust in him. Although she doubted him during his absence, and although she remained broken and furious because of what she thought he had done, Tyler had erased her worries when confessing with such sincerity and openness on the hilltop.

She knew him well enough to know when he was being forthright and when he trying to skirt the truth. There had been enough times in their relationship for her to realize when his words and body language were not in alignment. Today, however, was not one. What she witnessed today was a broken man who would have given anything and everything to be back in the loving graces of his goddess. No, it was not Tyler who need it to ask for forgiveness. It was she who needed to consider her own state of mind.

It was Destiny who needed to come to that place where she could completely forgive him and forgive herself for believing so many negative thoughts about his perceived actions.

It wasn’t until they were nearly out of the desert and on their way back to the city when her feelings and emotions got the best of her. It was a humbling experience but one she could no longer harbor. Pulling off to the side of the road, she stopped the car, unbuckled her seatbelt, and lunged into Tyler’s arms. Kissing him passionately, she sobbed while her body trembled.

“What’s wrong, Destiny? What’s going on?”

“I need to ask you,” she gulped hard. God, this was hard to say, she thought. “I need to ask you – for your – for your forgiveness.”

“Me, forgive you? Why would I need to forgive you? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I need you to forgive me for all of the horrible thoughts I have been thinking. I need you to forgive me for not trusting you.”

Ben Esra telefonda seni boşaltmamı ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32